In the modern era, eCommerce has taken over many different niches. Over the past couple of decades, it seems as though more shoppers have gotten comfortable buying various products and services online.
If you look at Amazon’s remarkable success, you’ll see how true that is.
The pandemic, of course, is contributing to that as well. Many brick-and-mortar locations are not seeing the sale numbers that they would like.
If you own a business, and it’s at all possible for you to do so, you should embrace eCommerce as a way of staying profitable. Here are some eCommerce marketing tips that you should keep in mind.
Shopping Chatbots
Let’s look for a moment at next-level eCommerce marketing best practices, included guided shopping chatbots for Facebook Messenger and similar apps. Shopping chatbots are:
- A tool that online stores sometimes utilize
- Computer programs with which customers communicate as they shop
These chatbots can help would-be customers find things that they want. They can answer product questions, and they can even help the customer complete the transaction when they’re ready to buy.
These chatbots are like a concierge service for casual shoppers. You certainly feel fancy communicating with them, as though you have a personal assistant by your side as you browse. Facebook Messenger uses them, but so does the Nike website, eBay, and several other prominent business entities.
If you don’t have them on your site yet, you should consider commissioning someone to create one for you.
Work to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment
It’s the worst when someone goes through the shopping process on your site, and they select the products they want, but then they don’t convert. Perhaps they abandon their shopping cart, and at that point, who knows when or even if they might be back.
There are definitely ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment, though. For instance:
- You can streamline the buying process as much as possible
- You can accept many payment methods, including PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit cards, etc.
To secure a sale, you need a few vital details, like the customer payment method, their name, and address. The checkout is not the time to ask them for a lot of unnecessary information.
Try to keep things as basic as possible, so they have fewer misgivings when it’s conversion time.
Do All You Can to Build Up Your Email List
If you can get a customer’s email, then that’s not as good as a sale, but it’s still useful. You can include them in your email list and send them announcements periodically. You can tell them about sales and promotions you’re running.
How can you get that email, though? One way is to encourage them to sign up for your list when they visit your website. You can incentivize this behavior by offering them some sort of free promotional item, like a short eBook.
You might also inform them that if they sign up for your email list, you’ll enter them in an exciting drawing to win a gift certificate or a promotional product basket. You can mention past winners for credibility.
You can also utilize exit-intent popups. Some people respond to those. You can have opt-in forms in easy-to-see places, such as above the fold on your landing page.
Try to Upsell and Cross-Sell Your Products
You should also always be looking for those valuable upsell and cross-sell opportunities. An upsell is where you try to get someone to buy a more expensive product than what they’re considering. It also may be the same product, but with some additional features.
Another strategy is to ask the person to buy an additional warranty with that product. You can also go for the cross-sell. This is where you offer the would-be customer a similar product to the one they’re thinking of buying.
This way, even if the person decides that they don’t want that exact product, there is something similar right there on the screen. They might choose to click on that one and convert.
You can also have an algorithm on your site that tracks what someone has considered. It will then remember their shopping habits, so when they visit your site again from the same IP address, you’ll know the sort of things that they like.
Sites like Amazon are the eCommerce gold standard because of their extraordinary success. You can take lessons from them as you craft your eCommerce website to be the most streamlined and optimized that it can be.